Sunday, April 25, 2010

This weekend, while hiking about Joshua Tree National Park, the state of the Earth was on my mind. The beauty in nature will do that to you...here is a political spin on the environment.

A week ago, the Associated Press reported that "A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes." In response, a woman at Purdue University started a Facebook Page inviting women worldwide to "Help fight supernatural thinking and the oppression of women, just by showing your cleavage!". According to a report in the Examiner (another Examiner article) more than 150,000 women will attend the BoobQuake event by wearing revealing clothing. The Boobquake event which will occur on Monday, April 26th to:

"encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.”

While I don't plan to wear a cleavage baring shirt to work tomorrow, I do support the idea of activism to demonstrate that leaders - religious, secular, political or academic - words should not be taken at face value. Sometimes, the best way to challenge leadership is to respond with a satirical demonstration. Boobquake illustrates the hypocrisy espoused by a specific type of leadership.

While scantily clad women are not the cause of natural disasters, people are responsible for the extinction of incredible animal species, pollution, etc etc. So in keeping with Earth awareness week (as it was Earth Day on the 22nd), we move on to climate change.

I happened upon Fox News on Saturday morning during a discussion of a climate change awareness and activism project Inconvenient Youth. This project was started by an American teen and then supported by former VP and Nobelaureate Al Gore, which encourages teenagers to share their ideas and action plans to help solve the climate crisis. This is the type of bottom up/top down activism that should be encouraged by people of all different political stripes. However, Fox News tries to scare viewers into thinking Al Gore is trying to brainwash their children and spend tax dollars on useless environmental programs. Absurd, to keep with the activism theme, I think it's time we have a public demonstration against the idiocy that is Fox News...oh wait, we do...thank you Jon Stewart...